MUSKEGON HEIGHTS, MI – Three people caught in an apartment fire Wednesday night were taken to Mercy Health’s Hackley Campus, according to Muskegon Heights Fire Chief Christopher Dean.

The fire occurred around 9:30 p.m. July 10 at East Park Manor in Muskegon Heights. The extent of the victims' injuries is unknown.

Jarvis Levelston, who was at the apartment complex at the time of the fire, said he ran to the apartment after seeing heavy amounts of smoke. He said once he got to the apartment he found a women and child, who he described as being 2 to 4 years old, hanging out of the second floor windows.

Levelston said he convinced the child and woman to jump from the windows into his arms. He added that after catching and handing the child off to another bystander he helped the woman down from the window.

He said the woman was “frantic” and collapsed. He said she then got up and ran about 50 to 75 yards from the building before collapsing again in a field adjacent to the building.

Dean said smoke could be seen six blocks away. He said when firefighters arrived on scene heavy smoke was coming out of both of the second-floor windows and the roof line.

He said firefighters entered the apartment and extinguished the fire fairly quickly, but due to the amount of plastic that was burned a heavy amount of smoke was present.

Dean estimated the amount of damage caused from the fire to be around $20,000. Almost all of the damage was to the apartment where the fire started with smoke damaging the apartment next to it.

The cause of the fire remains “undetermined,” but Dean said a moped inside the apartment could have something to do with blaze.

Norton Shores Fire Department and Muskegon Fire Department assisted Muskegon Heights Fire Department at the scene. Dean said calls for assistance were put out because of the potential for people to “be trapped inside and hanging out of windows.”